Bleeding Steel Ordeal

Destination size is 50G, so no compression is required (and CloneBD confirms this).
Yet, when CloneBD processes this .iso, it insists on decoding and encoding it.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your input.
It turns out, that CloneBD is somewhat afraid to let this video stream through without a little bit of compression.
This video has an unusually high video bit rate (around 37 mbit/s - normally even high-bitrate blu-ray discs hover around 20-25 mbit/s).
The mechanism causing this "forced compression" calculates an estimate of all streams involved and tries to make sure, that the total will not exceed the maximum muxing bitrate of 48mbit/s.
The only knob it can turn to achieve this is the video bitrate (unless you choose to downconvert audio).
The disc actually scratches along precisely that line at places, there wouldn't even be enough room left for another low bitrate AC3 mono track.

There are two HD audio tracks - and the thing with HD audio (except LPCM) is that it has a non-const bit rate. So CloneBD also adds a margin to the known, estimated average audio bit rate, to be sure.
Because overshooting the maximum muxrate will cause severe hiccups during playback.

But: this whole safe-guard should not be required, when doing a remux-only, because the original authoring should already have taken care of not exceeding the limits (and they have, the disc is very cleanly authored and within all boundaries, even if only just).
So we'll remove that check in the next version, so long as you're not doing any compression.

As a workaround for now: if you don't need the Chinese track, just deselect that, then CloneBD will drop the forced transcoding.

And fascinating all the work CloneBD is doing behind the scenes to make sure everything comes out just right. Really great product!

Ok, I had already created a Partial Copy folder by moving the .iso to a computer where I could use h/w acceleration.

BUT...

... if I fully understand what you're saying Reto, if I re-do the Partial Copy and remove the Chinese audio or downconvert the audio to, say regular 5.1, not only will there be no transcoding, but I should also get a video stream without CloneBD's "forced" compression.

At least, until the next release.

I'm a stickler for getting the best video and sound possible, so I think I will remove the Chinese audio track and re-process.

No surprising if all you're doing is removing that single audio track. Since after that it doesn't need to compress, a 1:1 copy goes very fast with hw acceleration. The only tweak it then has to do is fix the menu to point that Chinese entry to one of the remaining tracks.

No surprising if all you're doing is removing that single audio track. Since after that it doesn't need to compress, a 1:1 copy goes very fast with hw acceleration. The only tweak it then has to do is fix the menu to point that Chinese entry to one of the remaining tracks.

With my 1080 I can do a full capacity bd50 to bd25 in under 15 min.

Click to expand...

Well, no, it is surprising because on this computer even a straight copy of a 40G movie takes about half an hour.

No, h/w acceleration available on this machine - and even if it was, I don't believe it comes into play in a Partial copy with no transcoding. At least, that's what the CloneBD display indicates.

Attached Files:

Thank you for your input.
It turns out, that CloneBD is somewhat afraid to let this video stream through without a little bit of compression.
This video has an unusually high video bit rate (around 37 mbit/s - normally even high-bitrate blu-ray discs hover around 20-25 mbit/s).
The mechanism causing this "forced compression" calculates an estimate of all streams involved and tries to make sure, that the total will not exceed the maximum muxing bitrate of 48mbit/s.
The only knob it can turn to achieve this is the video bitrate (unless you choose to downconvert audio).
The disc actually scratches along precisely that line at places, there wouldn't even be enough room left for another low bitrate AC3 mono track.

There are two HD audio tracks - and the thing with HD audio (except LPCM) is that it has a non-const bit rate. So CloneBD also adds a margin to the known, estimated average audio bit rate, to be sure.
Because overshooting the maximum muxrate will cause severe hiccups during playback.

But: this whole safe-guard should not be required, when doing a remux-only, because the original authoring should already have taken care of not exceeding the limits (and they have, the disc is very cleanly authored and within all boundaries, even if only just).
So we'll remove that check in the next version, so long as you're not doing any compression.

As a workaround for now: if you don't need the Chinese track, just deselect that, then CloneBD will drop the forced transcoding.

Click to expand...

Hi Reto!

I've run into this situation again with another movie The Spy Who Dumped Me.

Again just removing a few titles and creating a Partial Folder.

CloneBD says total space will be under 48G and "no compression" - since the target size is 50G.

Yet, again, it decides to transcode the movie.

I applied your solution from before and removed the Spanish audio track (the only one other than English).

It worked again - CloneBD processed this time without transcoding.

So, I am assuming this is the same issue.

If you want to check I have attached the CloneBD log file with transcoding (second attachment - 2.7MB) and one from the run without (first attachment - 2.2MB).

Do you have an idea when your permanent fix will be released?

I'm thinking the next time this happens, there may not be an additional audio track to remove...

By "same issue as Bleeding Steel", I meant the issue @Reto previously described...

... CloneBD forcing compression because the video bitrate of a movie is somewhat higher than usual -- even though it doesn't need to as the disc is already authored to use the high bitrate and not exceed the maximum.

Reto said he was putting in a fix to not do this compression "for re-mux only". I think that means if there's no other reason to compress...

For The Spy Who Dumped Me, the symptoms are the same and the workaround solution was the same, so it would seem likely to be the same issue.

But then again, could be something entirely different...

I'm sure Reto will review and let us know one way or the other when he has a chance.